Reflection, transmission, and stability characteristics of optical beams incident upon nonlinear dielectric interfaces

A recently developed equivalent-article theory is illustrated by presenting the first analytic stability result for trapped transverse electric nonlinear surface waves at an interface separating two nonlinear dielectric media. The theory permits us to make quantitative predictions on beam reflection, transmission, and breakup with accurate estimates of the amount of incident beam power converted into propagating self-focused channels and scattered as radiation. Contact is made with earlier numerical studies of Gaussian beam incidence upon a linear-nonlinear interface and of the stability properties of trapped nonlinear surface waves.